Perplexity begins to be a state of mind for the people of the
Canary Islands. Very often, this perplexity turns into astonishment. But as the Christmas season approaches, it turns into fright. One goes around frightened by the Christmas aesthetic and wonders if it shouldn't be part of the syllabus of the psychiatry subject. Because, really, this aesthetic deserves a serious clinical study. There are some authors and artists who have explained the Canarian identity from surrealism, based on the contrast of
landscapes and the abrupt differences in climates and altitudes, which is supposed to have made the islander a complex mind capable of the most outlandish expressions where the ethnic appears combined with the Formica, one only has
to see the names of the Canarian wrestling teams (Tegueste Valenciana de Cementos, Ferretería Araya Unelco, etc.). I am not so clear about the surrealist theory, especially since the contrast of landscapes no longer exists.
Everything is covered in pitch and cement. I participate more in the theory of Franz Fanon who started from the theory of colonization to demonstrate the identity disruption and the contradictions suffered by the
colonized. Fanon was a psychiatrist and was astonished by the complexes of the colonized. And I wonder if it is not that complex and that rejection of the autochthonies that makes us feel a love-hate for our national peculiarities
that leads us to imitate the silliness of other peoples so that we are a little more accepted. One only has to go up through La Orotava to see a kilometer of tremendous masts and flags of the world that the
self-conscious Isaac Valencia has placed to bequeath to his endearing square decorated with giant penguins.
I thought the biggest Christmas atrocity I had seen was in Vecindario. On the wall of a roof whose facade was whitewashed with crystals. Yes, ground crystals, of those that if you get close you end up like the Jesus Christ of Mel Gibson, there was a giant papier-mâché sleigh or something
like that, bright red, pulled by two adult reindeer and with the puppet dressed in red and white. It was terribly sunny. But no. The biggest atrocity I found at the gas station in San Juan de la Rambla. The
previous night I was listening to the Christmas ranchos of Tinajo and the folklore classroom of the ULL teaching department and I enjoyed a large number of young people in an ethnically and ethylically comfortable revelry. The next morning I left for Garachico. I was a little damaged and went to help my brother-in-law grout the floors. I stopped at the gas station bar to have a cortadito and a tapa of potato omelet, when suddenly I observed behind the glass a huge cave in the form of a stage, with two giant polar bears and a huge sleigh pulled by Siberian dogs that transported another puppet in red and white. The background was a snowy peak like Fujiyama, and from
afar I thought that the lump in the middle was the nativity scene in the middle of a snowfall. I thought they had replaced the cow and the donkey of a lifetime with two polar bears that moved like the dog behind the cars.
But no. When I got closer, half hungover, I woke up from the shock. What was in the middle were typical Swiss houses, and at the foot a small pond where people threw coins. Behind the Fujiyama there were real banana trees. And in the adjacent ravine there were about a thousand loose roosters that peck on the coast and in the middle of the banana trees. People threw garbage. [Oscar->http://oscars-awards.com] Domínguez did not appear, but if he had shown up, imagine the scribble.
After grouting the floors we went to eat at Tierra del Trigo. In a beautiful place, in an authentic guachinche, with pork and goat meat, and an absolutely local wine, in a landscape of cardons, incenses, prickly pears, dragon trees and palm trees, and at the door, making a scandal, another mobile puppet in red and white. By the way, some of us thought that the puppet was an old communist since he dressed in red and always acted in secrecy, but it turned out that he worked for Coca-Cola. Night fell, and on the way back, we observed the exodus of the shearwaters. Exodus and stress caused by the lighting of the gas station.
We saw many couples embracing and entire families looking tenderly at the mobile bears and the puppet, and they threw some coins into the pond. Anyway, I don't want to act like I'm all that, I love three aspects of Christmas. The tender nougat, the ritual of the
baifo and the day of kings. I love them. I can't say the same about sparkling drinks. However, this year I have had a sudden thirst for cava. And I don't know from what point of view to explain it, whether from surrealism, whether from the televised colonized or whether from internationalism. I don't know, but I'm going to toast with cava, in total, one more extravagance, one less extravagance. By
the way, what will the gas station decorator toast with?
Paco Déniz